Impact of antihypertensive therapy on blood pressure reactivity during mental stress

The effects of baseline antihypertensive drugs or sympatholytic agents on the characteristic hemodynamic response pattern (i.e. increase in blood pressure and heart rate, decrease in total peripheral resistance) during emotional stress were examined. Middle aged male caucasian patients with hitherto untreated mild essential hypertension were given nitrendipine 10-20 mg per day, oxprenolol 160 mg per day or clonidine 75-300 micrograms per day until casual blood pressure was below 140/90 mmHg for at least three months. Blood pressure, heart rate and stroke volume was assessed, at rest and during emotional stress, before and during effective antihypertensive therapy. The increase in systolic pressure during stress was not attenuated by any of the drugs. Heart rate reactivity was lowest when patients received oxprenolol, but peripheral resistance during emotional stress was significantly increased. Clonidine had no unfavorable effects on the hemodynamic pattern during emotional stress but nitrendipine decreased peripheral resistance even more than the decrease in resistance observed during stress before initiation of therapy. If one accepts that antihypertensive therapy should not alter a physiological hemodynamic pattern to an unphysiological response, psychophysiological examinations seem to be valid in selecting suitable patients for the different alternatives in antihypertensive therapy.